Learning The Technology Of The Web Is Both Tough And Totally Necessary

by Bonnie Boots

Of all the many skills that must be mastered to do business on the internet, surely the hardest to get a handle on is the technology. Over the last few years, my morning prayer has always been, "Lord, save me from the software."

Learning to write a good sales page is a piece of cake compared to learning to format it as a web page.

Even something as complex as learning to write a book pales in comparison to the challenge of building a blog.

The technology that runs the internet is hard to learn, and because it's constantly changing, even harder to stay ahead of. That's why so many people avoid learning it.

I've had clients who've delayed doing business on the internet for years, shutting the door on many thousands of dollars, simply because they felt that learning to manage an autoresponder or a shopping cart was too hard.

It is hard. I compare learning to set up and manage an autoresponder or shopping cart to learning to drive a car. Both tasks require intense concentration for a few hours spread over a few weeks. During that time, you often feel intimidated, confused and insufficient to the task

Then one day, all the pieces fall into place. And you get it. You know how to drive. You don't yet know all the intimate details of what makes the car run. And you're not yet as sophisticated in using the car as you will be in a year. But you can get yourself from Point A to Point B. And for the moment, that's all you need.

You've met your goal and succeeded through the simple application of persistence and effort. And from now on, you, and you alone, determine where and how far you will go.

That's exactly what happens when you learn to use the software that makes the world appear on a monitor. From then on, you, and you alone, determine where and how far you will go.

I frequently hear gurus advising people that they don't have to learn anything about software. "Outsource!" they cry. "Outsource it all. You can hire people to do everything you need for $2 an hour!"

It's true. There are people all over the planet that will work for lower wages than Americans can. They frequent the freelance boards like eLance and oDesk, eager and ready to do the work for you.

There's just one catch…or two.

In order to post a job and hire someone to do it, you have to know exactly what you need. You have to be able to communicate to someone in another culture, someone that speaks a language you do not--the language of techno speak--and explain the details of exactly what you need done.

If you don't know even the basics of what you want done, you'll be at a disadvantage.

You won't know what to ask for. In most cases, you won't even know what's possible. And for the most part, the people you try to hire won't consider it their responsibility to educate you. They will simply perform the task to your specifications, even if they can see gaping holes in your specifications.

You get what you ask for.

And having asked for it, and hired the job out, what do you have? Essentially, you have an employee. This means you're the manager, overseeing the work being done on a job you do not understand.

I've seen people waste vast amounts of money (in one memorable case, $18,000.) outsourcing work they did not understand to people they could not communicate with, and ending up with nothing usable.

Every time I see this, I think, "Why didn't they first learn to drive?"

When people learn to drive, they have different goals. When I learned to drive, all I wanted was to get to the grocery store. When my neighbor learned to drive, he wanted to race at Daytona. We each learned as much as we needed to in order to meet our own goals.

Software is the same way. If you're goal is to outshine Microsoft, you'll have to invest vast amounts of time and money. If your goal is to put up blogs, your investment in time and money will be considerably smaller.

When I started out, my goal was to publish multimedia material. That meant I had to learn image editing, video editing and animation software. And I had to learn it at night, after 8 hours of earning a living.

It nearly killed me. There were days--hell, there were months--when I was so stressed out I could barely see the monitor through my tears.

And then, one fine day, the light bulb went on. The pieces fell into place. And the crude little picture of a pig I'd made in an image editor got up and danced in the animation software. And from that day on, I and I alone have determined where and how far I will go.

Learn the technology of the web. It's tough, but it's totally necessary!


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